This essay is a philological note on the Old French glosses inserted in the anonymous Peshat Commentary on Song of Songs (Oxford, Bodleian MS Opp. 625 [Ol. 1370] [Neub. 1465]). Each of the glosses (some of them consist in more than one word and constitute little syntagms) is analyzed from the point of view of Old French linguistics and medieval French literature and civilization (including realia). Some dialectal characteristics hint at an Anglo-Norman or continental Norman origin of the glosses, which could shed a new light on the history of the text. When possible, those glosses are also compared with similar (but not identical) glosses in other texts of French Jewish origin. Moreover, the specific meanings of those glosses, some of them super-commentaries inasmuch as they gloss the Hebrew commentaries of the biblical letter and not necessarily the biblical terms themselves, confirm what has been already stated by Sarah Japhet and Barry Walfish regarding the quite heterodox contents conveyed by this exegetic work.

Recommend

Additional Information

ISSN

1553-0604

Print ISSN

0021-6682

Pages

pp. 38-53

Launched on MUSE

2019-02-27

Open Access

No

Project MUSE Mission

Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.